Last week, a lot of things happened in Charlotte in the world of NASCAR. None of them on-track, mind you, but people talked, the word “excited” was used, used some more, and then used even more than that.

Thing is, the word “excited” may not have been the first word on NASCAR fans’ minds upon confirmation of last week’s biggest news, the Chase for the Sprint Cup changes to include expansion to 16 teams and elimination after the third, sixth, and ninth races.

Still, we had MotorSportsTalk’s Jerry Bonkowski on site in Charlotte to recap all the happenings (he wrote all posts below except the ones listed in parentheses). Here’s a rundown of everything from the teams, drivers and NASCAR sanctioning body in the last week, in case you missed any of it.